Padrões de assentamento de sítios de engenhos no estuário amazônico

Abstract

According to current approaches in Archaeology, not only the object, or artifact, are considered the determinants for reconstructing the livelihoods of past societies. The use of other variables such as environmental data (soil, climate and vegetation), has been fundamental to recover aspects such as settlement patterns of archaeological sites, both from prehistoric and historical periods. This work aims to use a geographical approach, in order to subsidize archaeological studies of mills in the Amazon River estuary, from the 17th to the 19th century. We considered as data sources, the old works of naturalists and missionaries and recent studies of physical geography directed to the mills in the region, maps, iconography and photographs. The documental register was also obtained from the Codices of the Public Archive of Pará. The analysis of the material culture collected during the excavation of the chapel and the big house of the Murutucu mill in 1996 was also carried out. Thus, it was possible to observe that the choice of the location of the engenhos near the rivers could be related to the fertility of the floodplain soil for the planting of agricultural crops, as well as to the need to drain the production. The study of maps and iconographies can show that some engenhos were of great economic opulence, thanks to their spatial arrangement, which occupied large tracts of land, and often included plantations, not only of sugar cane, but also of cocoa, cotton, and rice. The analysis of the material culture (china, glass, bricks, tiles, metals, etc.), evidenced the standard of living of the population of these localities, which can be compared to the living standards of the engenhos of the Brazilian Northeast. With this, it became evident that the mills were implanted according to the physical and geographical characteristics of the Amazon region. After all, their location on the banks of the rivers allowed for hydraulic motive power, planting area, and production transportation.